


Crossing the Line

by thedevilchicken



Category: CSI: Miami
Genre: (but Rick's there to provide them), Angst, Horatio has no rules, Horatio needs no rules, M/M, Post-Canon, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 15:08:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4629876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every Sunday at 10am sharp, Horatio’s phone rings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crossing the Line

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lasairfhiona](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasairfhiona/gifts).



> Based on a friend's note that after Rick Stetler's arrest Horatio seems to have no one reminding him not to break the rules, and so he proceeds to do so on an ever more regular basis.

Every Sunday at 10am sharp, Horatio’s phone rings. 

He knows the number so he doesn’t pick up. He lets it ring, in his pocket or on the counter as he drinks a coffee in his kitchen, on his desk in the office, in his hand sometimes where it vibrates and makes his palm feel strange. He lets it go to voicemail and he’s never once checked to see if the messages are just ten to fifteen seconds of silence or if there’s actually a message there, a familiar voice. 

At least, that’s the way it’s been until today. 

Today, he’s sitting in the Hummer’s driver’s seat when his phone starts to ring just like it always does each and every Sunday morning. He fishes it from the inside pocket of his jacket and he looks at it, knows the number because the number doesn’t change. He lets it ring for ten seconds, fifteen, staring at it like it’s just turned into an everglades alligator right there in his hand, and then he finally does it. He swipes to answer the call. 

“Horatio?”

He rests his head back against the headrest in the Hummer and closes his eyes behind his sunglasses.

“Horatio?”

“Rick.”

Neither of them knows where to go from there because, he thinks, neither of them knew he was going to pick up. It’s been months and he’s never done it, so there’s silence until Horatio says, “I’m working. I can’t talk.”

“I’ll call next week,” Rick says. 

As he ends the call, Horatio doesn’t doubt he will. 

Next week, his phone rings as he’s eating a late breakfast there at home and so he puts down his fork and he answers the call. 

“Rick.”

“Horatio.” There’s a pause and Horatio can hear the prison in the silence, chatter at the bank of phones where Rick’s standing, a yell somewhere in the background too far away to be a problem, the voice of a guard he’s met there more than once when he’s visited people who aren’t Rick. “I didn’t think you’d pick up.”

“Neither did I,” he replies. It’s perfectly true. 

He doesn’t ask him what he wants and Rick doesn’t tell him. There’s just ten seconds of the sound of other inmates, the sound of the place where Rick Stetler now resides, and then Rick says, “It’s good to hear your voice.”

When Horatio hangs up, he doesn’t feel much like eating anymore.

He’s in his office the next time, sitting behind his desk with papers spread all over it, interview transcripts and depositions, schedules of evidence for a trial that’s gone sideways and all he really wants to do is drag someone into interrogation by the scruff of their neck and make them talk with all their evidence, or drag them somewhere else and make them talk another way. 

“Rick,” he says, when he picks up the phone. “It’s not a good time.”

“It’s never a good time, Horatio,” Rick says, and he guesses they both know that’s true. 

“I’m working.”

“You’re _always_ working.” Rick sighs and the line rustles like he’s switching the receiver to the other ear there in the prison corridor. “Do you even have any kind of a personal life, since…” He trails off. Horatio rubs his eyes. 

He doesn’t talk about visiting Julia like he does sometimes. He doesn’t talk about infrequent Skype calls with Kyle from wherever he’s currently posted overseas, doesn’t mention Yelina and Ray Jr and how they’re doing. He doesn’t talk about Calleigh and the kids Rick knows nothing about, doesn’t mention the team at all because that’s not what Rick means. 

“How am I supposed to do that, Rick?” he asks instead, and his voice sounds even, measured, but that’s just the usual veneer. 

There’s no answer forthcoming so he ends the call and he goes back to work.

The next week an officer’s been shot dead on duty and Horatio’s taken it personally the way he thinks all cops should. Maybe he takes he it a little more personally than the others, but that’s just the way he is, he thinks. It’s nothing out of the ordinary.

“This is not a good time, Rick,” he says. He has his gun out. His glasses are in the hand that’s also holding his phone as he takes a few last cautious steps. He knows what he’s going to have to do.

“Where are you?” Rick says. Horatio guesses his voice must sound odd, echoing off of the warehouse walls, loud and hollow. 

“I’m working,” he says, and to the guy with the gun he says, “Drop it.”

“What are you doing, Horatio?” Rick says. He almost sounds concerned.

There’s a gunshot and Horatio can hear Rick’s voice on the line but he can’t hear the words. He thinks maybe he can still hear him as he falls unconscious.

He’s at home the next weekend when the phone rings, sitting in his dining room with Yelina and Ray Jr eating breakfast she’s cooked because she’s concerned about him. Everyone’s concerned about him; he keeps telling them it’s just his shoulder, he’ll be fine, and he wants to mean it. 

He excuses himself to take the call. 

“Rick,” he says. 

“Horatio.” A pause, and Horatio sits down on the side of the bed. “I thought I’d see it on the news if you’d died.”

“I’m very much alive, Rick.” 

“You were shot.” 

“I’ve been shot before.” 

“That’s not an excuse to go seek it out for shits and giggles.” Rick sighs. “How bad is it?”

Horatio glances at himself in the mirror, at the sling his arm is in because the bullet struck at his shoulder. He’d hit his head on the way down, come out of it with some blood loss and a light concussion. 

“I’m fine, Rick,” he says, but he feels strange saying it. 

“You’ve not been fine since Marisol,” Rick says. 

He hangs up because he knows he’s right. 

The team asks him to brunch the next week and he wants to say yes and he wants to say no so he leaves it open; he turns up late, knowing he’ll excuse himself when the phone rings. 

“Rick.”

“Horatio. Where are you? That doesn’t sound like a crime scene.”

He goes out into the parking lot and sits down on a low wall by his car. “I’m at brunch with my team,” he says. “Do you want me to say hi, Rick?”

“Don’t be facetious,” Rick says. They both know what the team’s reaction would be if they knew who he was talking to. 

“I want to see you,” Rick says next. “Can you do that?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I do.”

“You thought a lot of things were a good idea, Rick. That doesn’t make it so.”

It seems Rick has no way to argue that. 

He’s in bed the next time he calls, he’s overslept but he needed it. He shot a man last night and by the time he got home he couldn’t remember his name and he thinks that should bother him. The phone wakes him and he picks up, yawning. 

“Rick,” he says. His voice sounds choked and fuzzy.

“Horatio. Did I wake you?”

“Yes.”

“I’d say I’m sorry but I’m not.”

Horatio makes a sound of faint amusement, too tired to stop himself. 

“I remember the last time I woke you,” Rick says. 

Horatio closes his eyes but the sun’s already in the room, streaming in through the thin curtains. “Don’t,” he says, but it doesn’t sound much like a warning. 

“You remember,” Rick says. “I think about it.”

“I don’t.”

“You should,” Rick says. “I want you to think about about it, Horatio.”

It’s Rick that hangs up first this time and Horatio knows it’s deliberate. He remembers, not that he ever forgot but Rick’s voice and the words bring it up to the surface. He hates himself as he pushes his hand down into his underwear under the sheets; he hates himself for it but that’s not enough to make him stop.

“I want to see you,” Rick says, the next time. 

“I’ll come to your execution,” Horatio says, and that just makes Rick laugh. They both know it’ll be tied up in court so long he could be seventy before they even decide if they can do it or not. Chances are another prisoner or cancer or even food poisoning will get him before the death penalty does.

“I want to see you,” Rick repeats, and Horatio sighs because he almost wants that, too. And he’s standing there in his kitchen fully clothed like he’s about to go in to work on his day off but he’s unbuckled his belt and he’s leaning on the counter and he knows he shouldn’t do it but he can’t _not_.

“Talk to me,” he says, his voice strained, and maybe Rick understands because he doesn’t ask what he should talk about, he just talks. His voice gets low and quiet and there’s only so much he can say just in case they have an audience but the content doesn’t matter; he doesn’t tell him he’s sorry for what he did but he says he’s sorry for other things, for how he handled things, for the time he broke a glass, for waking him up in the middle of the night before a court date, for the mess he made of the Hummer that one time. 

It’s obtuse and obscure enough that no one who’s listening could ever really know and Horatio has the phone on speaker on the counter with his microphone switch to mute so they can’t hear it as he rests his head down on the tiles and strokes himself. 

Rick gets quiet but he doesn’t hang up and after, Horatio picks the phone back up. 

“Are you still there?” Rick asks.

“I’m still here.”

“You were gone for a while.”

“Yes,” he says. “You should think about that.”

Horatio knows there’s something wrong when he’s averaging three shootings per month and IAB aren’t checking up on him. He wonders if they’ve decided their blind eye to protocol makes up for Rick Stetler’s years-long vendetta against him in particular and the crime lab in general. He wishes they’d step up and do their job because he knows he’s got a problem. He just can’t do anything about it, keeps dragging the team into it with him, and he thinks perhaps it’s getting worse. 

“You sound tired,” Rick says. 

“I am.”

“You’re not sleeping?”

“I’m not.” 

“Why is that, Horatio?”

He can’t tell him why, not over the phone. He can’t say he’s picking gunfights it’s almost certain he can’t lose, and few he knows could go either way. He can’t say he’s broken all the rules so many times he wonders now if the rules apply at all. It seems they don’t.

“I didn’t appreciate how good you were at your job, Rick,” he says instead, cryptic. 

“I kept you in line,” Rick says, careful. 

“You did.” 

Rick doesn’t ask who does that now, maybe so Horatio won’t have to answer that there’s no one. He won’t even have to think the word _vigilante_. It used to scare him but he’s past that now.

“I miss that relationship,” Rick says instead, and Horatio almost laughs. 

“So do I, Rick,” he says. “So do I.” 

And he knows neither of them is thinking about work anymore after that, neither of them is thinking of the Miami Dade PD. They’re thinking about a night when Horatio followed Rick home to talk about how IAB was impeding his investigation and it turned into yelling then into something else. They’re thinking about that first unexpected kiss pushed up against the wall just inside Rick’s front door and then the second, three days later, past midnight one night when they couldn’t not do it anymore. 

“I want to see you,” Rick says, and his voice is strained. 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Rick,” Horatio says. But for the first time since he went away, he wants to.

The next Sunday, he doesn’t walk away from the crime scene to pick up his phone. 

“Rick,” he says. Eric and Ryan both look at him, just for a second, like they’re thinking it _can’t_ be that Rick, the one they all knew; it must be someone else. It’s not like there aren’t a million Ricks in the world, but he’s walking a fine line. 

“Horatio,” Rick says. “It sounds like you’re working.” 

Crime scenes always sound a particular way, Horatio knows that, and Rick saw enough of them to know that sound, the way people talk behind the tape, the occasional shriek of a siren, all the foot traffic and chatter. He won’t see another one.

“I am, Rick,” he says. And then he walks back to the Hummer and gets in through the driver’s side door. It closes with a clack and then he’s alone, in silence. The crime scene feels a hundred miles away. 

Rick broke a glass the first time he went to Horatio’s place. It was past 11pm but Horatio was still awake, a night owl though he spends most of his time out in the day shift sun. He answered the door and Rick strode in past him, not angry but agitated, still in his suit though he’d removed his tie since the office. Horatio locked the door and Rick looked at him and though there was an argument waiting to be had, they didn’t have it. 

They kissed instead, Horatio’s hands at Rick’s lapels, Rick’s in Horatio’s hair, the taste like the glass of wine he’d been drinking with his half-finished almost-too-late dinner because he’d been working late as usual. Rick knocked the glass off the table as they walked by and he never apologised but Horatio never expected him to, apologies just not his style. They stayed in the dining room the first time, up against the wall still clothed with one hand down past each other’s belts, under clothes, too hard and too quick but the first time they did that it was never going to be any other way. They had too much history.

A week later, no discussion between because there was nothing to discuss, they made it into the bedroom with a trail of clothing in their wake. Rick went down on his hands and knees on the bed and Horatio slicked himself, pushed into him, groaned and pulled out so he could do it again. It hadn’t been planned. It was never planned. 

Rick’s place three days later, Rick’s mouth on him as he went down on his knees and Horatio returned the favour six days later in the back of the Hummer like there was any sense in that at all, like it wasn’t playing with fire, like the back seat didn’t need a really good clean right after. Back at Horatio’s a week after that, then days after, again, again, till one night Rick stayed and Horatio didn’t complain when he woke him sometime around 3am so they could fumble around in the dark till Rick was inside him for the first time, breathless and hard. It was the first time but not the last.

Horatio stepped in between Rick’s knees at the high stool at his kitchen counter in the morning and Rick let him stand there, close, his face in Horatio’s hands. They kissed, coffee and toothpaste, and then Horatio went to court. Things were never awkward, they were just tense sometimes when the job bled into everything else. 

“I want to see you,” Rick says, the next time he calls. 

Horatio hangs up. An hour later, they’re in a room together there in the prison; he hasn’t thought it through but he knows he hasn’t thought of anything else. 

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Rick says, chained there to the table in his prison-issue jumpsuit. “What changed?”

“Nothing,” Horatio says. And he takes a seat. 

For a long moment they don’t talk and then Horatio waves the guard away, waits until he leaves the room but even then he doesn’t talk. They just look at each other and it’s familiar but it’s different because he’s never seen him like this. He didn’t testify at the trial, after all; he’s never had to see him since Wolfe perp-walked him out of the lab. He hasn’t wanted to, except maybe there’s nothing else he’s wanted more.

“Is anyone listening?” Rick says, finally breaking the silence. 

“No,” Horatio replies. He’s made sure they’re not. 

“You look tired.”

“I am.”

Rick nods. “Tell me everything.”

And for his sins, he does. 

For the next week he wonders if Rick will tell. He wonders if he’ll call in his attorney or he’ll get in touch with an ASA, wonders if he’s going to find himself perp-walked right into lockup, but he doesn’t wonder why he told him. Nothing happens. Rick hasn’t told. He supposes he wouldn’t get much out of it, after all, because no one would believe him. Rick’s not a good man but he’s not a fool.

He goes back the second week and they talk again and Rick laughs as he shakes his head at him. 

“You’re losing it, Horatio,” he says. “Take a step back or you’re going to end up just like me, or worse.”

He rattles his shackles against the metal table for effect. It would be sobering if Horatio weren’t already there. 

The third week, he goes back again and once the guard’s left he moves around the table and leans there right beside him as they speak. Horatio knows he won’t try to hurt him, and he doesn’t. 

“You seem better,” Rick says, when Horatio’s done talking. “More together. That’s good.”

“I am,” he replies, because he is. 

By the fourth week they have a routine that Rick breaks when he says, “I miss you,” a surprise mid-sentence interjection like he just can’t hold it in. 

Horatio pauses, thrown, and then he leans down and he kisses him, hot and hard with his fingers over the back of Rick’s neck till they’re both close to breathless with it. He rests his forehead against Rick’s for a second after and there’s a moment when he hates that Rick can’t touch him, a moment when he truly hates what’s happened. But what’s done is done. Rick did this to himself. 

The fact that Rick was the one behind it all came as a surprise and Horatio knew then he’d lost objectivity. But he’s lost it again since then, since Rick’s been inside, since IAB’s been off his back and he’s had free rein in Miami. He’s lost objectivity with every single case he’s had till everything is as personal as Rick’s arrest. Rick’s the only one who’s ever been able to remind him of how far he can go, the _only_ one. 

“I’ll be back next week,” Horatio says and Rick smiles as Horatio calls for the guard. 

“I’ll see you,” Rick says, and he will, he always sees him. He’s the only one who does. 

Outside in the sun he slips his glasses into place and he heads for the Hummer across the parking lot. There’s work to do but he can trust himself now, for at least another week. He knows what he can and can’t do. He knows how far he can go. 

He knows where the line is now because Rick redraws it for him week by week.


End file.
